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Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Finally I've got the reason to try some new paints I bought long time ago. The reason was a bunch of rose petals of Sheffield Botanical Garden. Quite simple objects to play with colours.

Before I painted them, I compared the petals' colours side by side with my radial colour charts/wheels. I singled out the closest colours by rotating them out from the stacks.

The new paints I used:
1. Daniel Smith Quinacridone Red for the red splotch of white round petal (see the middle left petal in the final work).
2. W&N Red Deep for the colour mix of the middle bottom red petal. It has a wide tonal range and spread in wetted area smoothly.
3. W&N Scarlet Lake for the colour mix of the reddish-orange petal in the center. A very vibrant colour!
4. W&N Quinacridone Magenta
5. W&N Permanent Magenta.

Sadly, I failed to digitalise the painting :( I tried to scan it several times but the vibrant reds kept losing the details and made ugly, uneven gradations. This is what I can share from my camera. Enjoy! :)

In the beginning, Rachel presented a very interesting slideshow and prints of her works. I was mesmerised mostly by her paintings of the herbarium specimens (dried-pressed plants) of the Kew Garden. They are massive and GRAND (I do mean it when I say grand!). One of them was a 5 meters long. It contained very well composed of 700 specimens of 504 families of the plant kingdom. It was a fascinating assortment, from tiny Amborella (the oldest and most “primitive” plant
family) to a leaf of passion fruit that was collected by Charles Darwin himself. She explained that it took 766 days to complete this scientifically accurate and exquisite painting. What a labour of love! *Please check this out to see how fascinating the work.

Rachel did a quick demonstration of painting an Afzelia seed before she gave us 2-3 hours and her favorite paper, Saunders Waterford hot pressed paper, to work on our seeds/pods under her care.